


When All the Salt is Taken From the Sea

by freddieofhearts



Series: Continuous [3]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Cats, Childhood Trauma, Disordered Eating, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Major Illness, Period Typical Attitudes, Shyness, Trauma Symptoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 07:57:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19942792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freddieofhearts/pseuds/freddieofhearts
Summary: This is Freddie: a person who hangs back in crowds, who does not want to be introduced. A person who might vanish if you try, if you push him. A little popping sound, and—why, he’s gone.Jim Hutton reflects.





	When All the Salt is Taken From the Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [royaltyisshe64](https://archiveofourown.org/users/royaltyisshe64/gifts).



*

_Where can I be safe, where can I belong_  
 _In this great big world of sadness?_  
– from ‘The Great Pretender’

i.

Often he moves away in his sleep, forming a ball with his narrow limbs tucked neatly inside—like one of the cats to whom he gives his entire heart. Sleeping is when he looks his smallest, and when Jim feels most insistently tender towards him. He imagines he can see the boy in Freddie’s face, the fragile lines of him. A child thinly iced over.

Where did you come from? That’s what he wants to ask. And also: what happened to you? There are no far shores in that face, and no Indian mountains. All that Jim knows has been scrambled together from fragments let drop in odd moments. 

A white beach. 

An ayah. 

A piano lesson. 

It adds up to nothing much.

ii.

This is Freddie: a person who hangs back in crowds, who does not want to be introduced. A person who might vanish if you try, if you push him. A little popping sound, and—why, he’s gone.

He is not to be left alone. That is article one, don’t forget it, unspoken, essential: maybe a fireable offence? (Probably not, he’ll change his mind and take you back. Soft as a girl.)

Early afternoon in the spring, and a house drifted through by the scent of flowers, by the green smell of rain, by an English breeze which comes and goes more like breath than weather. He can hear Freddie talking to a cat, but he doesn’t know which cat it is, because Freddie isn’t using the name. He’s speaking a special cat dialect, sprinkled with invented words and pet names—more dignified than baby talk, as befits such a high ranking animal, but not meant for human ears either. 

This is Freddie: a person who drops a cat into your lap gently, not wanting you to get a scratch, or the cat to be frightened. Intensely delicate giggle running up the scale and down. 

Ribbon rolled up, in a little box. 

“It’s the one you gave me, my dear! Don’t you remember?” 

Saving everything.

This is Freddie: kissing the envelopes of cards written for especially favoured friends. “We won’t tell! He’s too straight to appreciate it, but I love him too much not to.”

iii.

He must never be left alone. No one explicitly says so—not in the early days. Never in Germany, nor in London either. At first he is only Freddie, and this is how things are done: then, quickly, he is ill. One thing after another.

Oh, nothing, my love. Run down! Burning the poor little candle at both ends ( _a moderately lewd gesture_ ). 

Excuses, excuses. 

For it is not a matter of physical frailty, but something else. Alone won’t do. Not in a bar or a club or a shop. Not in a flat. Not in a restaurant. Not in the car. Not in a park—not in a botanical garden, nor a theatre. Nowhere at all. To Jim’s initial bewilderment, he even needs someone to go with him to the toilet. 

He’s seen Freddie so upset, nervous and out of sorts in the car that Phoebe Freestone took hold of both his hands and clasped them tight in his own. Simply to calm him. No trace of amorous intent at all. It was like a parent soothing their troubled child. 

Such anxiety must be a mortification, and Freddie will not speak of it, will not explain. He switches on and off like stage lighting. Vivacious. Tender-hearted. Terrified. 

On Jim’s lap he shivers with pleasure as Jim’s hand cups the nape of his neck, strokes and dips lower. Soft skin under the crew-neck of his sweatshirt. Jim kisses his temple. The hollow of his cheek. Shy, soft mouth. 

He is too light. He’s there, but it feels like he won’t be staying put. 

There’s nothing like the feeling of tension leaving him. When the bundle nestled close to Jim’s chest melts suddenly closer and feels suddenly softer, free of palpable fear.

iv.

When Freddie feels overcome by nerves, he can’t always keep his food down. It embarrasses him horribly, and he retreats to the bathroom with Phoebe to attend to him, emerging pallid and watery-eyed some time later.

He doesn’t want Jim. He doesn’t want help. 

How are you supposed to tell the difference between a thing like that, and being ill? Only it’s a torment for years, not parsing it better, quicker. Did you know before you knew, you are always asking.

v.

Freddie’s hunched over the newspaper, his skin grey, filmed with sweat. A morning teacup lies tipped over on the bedside table, streaming fluid across it unregarded. A mess. He’s not even complaining. He doesn’t say a word about it.

That’s it, you get up too early, and miss things. Phoebe is on Jim’s side of the bed—with his shoes still on, which Freddie would never tolerate on an ordinary day. He’s trying to touch Freddie, to do something, to dry off his brow or his wet cheeks. 

Freddie pushes him away with a nervous little movement, and gasps. Is it shock or nausea? Jim shoves a bowl at Phoebe, meaning _use this_ , but Phoebe looks baffled: looks at it like he doesn’t know what it is, or who Jim is. 

Freddie’s hands are trembling. 

“How could–?” he gets out only the first words before his voice dies entirely. Now he’s not even in tears. The paper falls out of his fingers. 

When Jim does touch him, he feels colder than a living person should be. He pulls away at first, and then he lies face down and silent for quite some time. 

Jim has never understood why there are such grim faces when Prenter’s name comes up—didn’t Freddie like the man well enough, to keep him around so long? What in heaven’s name could he have done wrong? He’ll never ask Freddie a question like that; he can’t ask anyone else. 

Another year before Phoebe tells him a little. Emergency tea in the kitchen, one-thirty ack emma. Bitterly cold. Freddie has finally been got to sleep. There’s been no crisis. Only one of the bad nights: they happen and can’t be talked about. There is neither rhyme nor reason behind Phoebe wishing to speak of Paul Prenter now, except perhaps that he feels himself finally overburdened. This, by chance, is the night when his accounting of pain—totted up casually on the fly—has become more than he can stand alone. 

At first Jim doesn’t understand the story. Freddie? Hardly the blushing virgin. Not exactly corruptible. 

No. No—other drugs. Not that. 

Not always. 

One after another. 

He didn’t always have any too much choice in the matter. 

Come back bleeding.

Oh no, not even angry. I think he really missed him.

vi.

He became aware quite early on of things happening on the margins. There were matters he did not see, or could not, or was not supposed to. Why? Plastic bowls, unexplained appointments. Phoebe closing a door, taking Freddie away, changing the sheets. Sad sounds.

Freddie’s rich as Croesus. In his world, the lumps are sieved out. Life isn’t supposed to hurt a rich man. So it’s all the more baffling, how it seems to abrade him, catch him on the raw. 

There are some nights of bad dreams which go unexplained. 

In bed he is loving and voracious. Freddie wants to be fucked—but at least as much as that, he needs to be held tightly against someone’s large warm body. Jim wonders how much it is truly him that matters: how much anyone would do, to fill this space. He’s learnt that Freddie was unwontedly persistent in chasing him, and that makes him feel desired, sexy, almost loved for a while.

vii.

Seven veils? Freddie has seven fucking thousand.

What’s underneath: another sham. Jim thinks in his most bitter moments. 

When he feels kinder, he thinks that to hide with such brilliance, such art, there must be some equally great hurt that requires it. Isn’t that right? The reactions he expects from Jim do not speak well of mankind in general. 

Freddie’s no boy. 

My man, he thinks, sitting up at night to watch him. Moonlight, and the floating, ambient glow of the city. It’s enough to see Freddie by, his pallor against his dark hair, and his delicate wasted head against the white pillow. 

Come back to me. Swim up from your hiding place in the sunken city. Trust me enough, again, to walk through the valley of night. I won’t hurt you, and I won’t leave you. Laugh for me again. 

He can hear only purring, and breathing, and the rustle of sheet against sheet as Freddie moves in the near dark.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to royaltyisshe64! 👑


End file.
